To get annoyed by Mummy Businesses

[NeilFan]

You know the type cake making, knitting, cup cakes, carding etc. Generally SAHMs whos kids are now at school and feel the need to go back into work but can't really be bothered. They pick up some hobby that people have diplomaticaly said they are good at and think it can be a business. Only know one person who actually has a talent for their business choice, all of the others would be better just asking for cash directly rather than palming off sub standard products onto polite friends. Same goes for all of that pampered chef and candle party lot who are even more deluded. My first post on mumsnet but this stuff really annoys me!

YABU. Your OP is just one big sneer.

When there are jobs aplenty that begin after the school run and end at 3pm and only exist in term time and childcare costs are affordable and don't cost a month's salary, these businesses will probably be on the decline.

Until then, try and think of it as women who can't afford to pay for childcare or can't get childcare from family, or who can't go to work because they have to look after young children and childcare would eat up their entire pay packet. They might be struggling on one salary and are trying to work from home to make a buck whilst looking after children.

No, I don't want home made cards or cupcakes that I can make myself, but I can empathise with what they're trying to do and sympathise because I bet the money they make is peanuts for a lot of fiddling about.

YABU
My nappy bag is a handmade WAHM bag. She was a costume maker before having children. Her skills are 1st rate my bag is amazing! I love the fact wearing something unique. I love the fact it's not made in a factory with poor working conditions.

Don't buy stuff you don't like simple.

A friend of mine designs and makes jewellery - very expensive jewellery, that she sells direct (mostly to order) at prices vastly lower than the commercial jewellery brands. I suppose it's a hobby job (her DH is the breadwinner with the regular income that supports their lifestyle) but there is real money it, that's for sure.

YABU I love the stuff SAHM's sell on. I have some really cute and original items for my kitchen :)

Undecided on this one, as some hobby jobs end up as great businesses.

Take MN for instance ...

But I do get sorely fed up with being invited to endless events where SAHMs try to sell me their jam/baby clothes/soap/jewellry. Since I know them it feels churlish not to. Even worse if the whole shebang is pitched as a 'charity event'.

I am a SAHM and I make cakes to sell, give private language lessons and do freelance translation. I have never approached anybody to flog cakes, people approach me and most of the time they want to pay a price which does not even cover the cost of ingredients because I can't buy at wholesale prices for the small quantities. Usually, I just cover cost of ingredients and make about ?10-15. I usually spend about 4 hours making the cake, so my time is not really factored in at all.

Silly, silly me for not going out there are and getting a proper job between the hours of 8.30-11.30 and 1-4.15 when my children are in school. I has no idea I was such a burden on all the working people out there.

wordfactory
I have never done a charity evening to flog my wares. Ever. Nor would I.

Actually greythorne I think it is wrong to pitch them as charity events.

Yes, the stall holders give a % to charity, but the reason they are there is ti sell their wares, knowing that more people will attend and more people will spend due to the charity factor.

I think Greythorne makes a good point about what I call portfolio careers. I run a marketing agency from home which I set up to enable me to be a WAHM. It's growing well but I know it'll slow when I give birth (as I intend to do lots of baby gazing).

I also happen to be a great cook and am considering doing something like a stall at our Framers Market. It'd only make me a hundred or so pounds but I can steam Christmas puds while I'm invoicing my clients. And it could pay for Christmas.

However life is far too short to bloody knit so I'm banking on someone trying to flog me a hand knitted baby hat

waiting I know lots of creatives who make their living by a patchwork quilt of activities...it can be unpredicatble of course, but it is never dull

Interesting how the two threads have gone quite differently.

And am I really the only one who shudders at the term 'mummy business'?

They don't annoy me.

The products are nice. I don't buy many hand crafted things. But a nice cake with good ingredients is nice.

Actually I don't buy many of them either, but a weekend market is much nicer with all the carefully home made things.

It's just another shit excuse To judge women and mothers.

Just ignore if you don't like it but to open moan about someone trying to make a little extra money just makes you look like a knob

The only time they annoy me is when they book a stall near me at a craft fair. I run my craft business as a proper business, working out costs and pricings appropriately to provide good value but also profit for the business. It makes it very difficult when someone on the next stall has a hobby business and a rich husband so can sell their products while paying themselves 50p an hour because they don't need the business to make money. They damage the reputation of proper craftworkers and cheapen the whole sector.

The sad fact is, in this country, there is not enough work to employ

• all new graduates - school leavers
• the unemployed
• mums who no longer wants to be sahm

You should be glad they don't all try to get "real" jobs, imagine the state of the economy then....

I still cringe at the thought of the pushiest mother at my sons' old school. She was a Virgin Vie rep and cornered each and every one of us flogging her wares relentlessly. One day she turned up to school in a new Beetle convertible which was her reward for h;aving flogged so much unwanted stuff, and bragged about it - I think her sales rate went down a bit after that!

Quite a few of my farming relations make good money from cake making - large numbers of cakes from the farmhouse kitchen for the WI. They are not particularly individual but nice tasting and sort of half way between real home made and shop.

BedHog the issue of people doing somehting for (next to) nothing is a problem in many sectors.

If people who don't need the money do somehting for (next to) nothing, then they price out those that actaully need paying.

No where is this more insidious than the concept of internship.

YABU. I started a small cake business a year ago (I do it alongside my full-time job, caring for DD1 and incubating DS1 ). I sell my cakes to a small farm nursery and earn about £100 a month from doing so which has helped me a little with saving for maternity leave which starts in a month.

If you don't like what your friends sell, don't buy it To slate the choices that other people make in an effort to start a new career, escape the rat-race etc is wholly unreasonable.

Hesterton most of the woemn I know doing such things are not poor women trying to make neds meet. They are rich women, trying to stave off boredom.

They often price other people who do need the money out of the market.

So, we have to hate women who work out of the home, women who stay at home with their children and now people who try to combine the two by working from home? It's getting difficult to keep up with how many other women we have to hate. Perhaps a sort of summary thread, 'women, they're shit aren't they?' would cover it.

What an unbelievably bitchy thread - some very very nasty attitudes on here. Mumsnet at its worst :(

To anyone doing this kind of thing to get a bit of extra money (or just for enjoyment) - as you can see, not everyone feels this way, don't let this drag you down!!

Some of you people should be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.

Here's a from me.

Childminder and Cake baker extraordinaire!

Feel free to pick up your own kids from school and make your own cakes or buy tasteless crap filled cake from the supermarket!

My 'hobby' kept my family afloat at the start of the year when my DH couldn't work. It paid for the food on the table.
If you don't want to buy what I'm selling then don't, there are plenty of who do.

Wordfactory, if you read the OP's other thread, this is apparently the type of woman the OP means: husband with a good salary, doesn't really need to earn money but wants to have a 'business', but probably seeling their products at below cost prices. That wasn't clear in the original message though.